The wagon drove off before Rotha could hear Joe's answer. She was gone! The weary months of imprisonment were done and passed. What was to follow now?
Rotha could not think, could not care. The phaeton was rolling smoothly along; she was traversing easily the long stretch of highway she had looked at so often; her old best friend was in charge of her; Rotha gave up care. Yet questions would come up in her mind, though she dismissed them as fast; and her heart kept singing for joy. She did not even ask whither she was driven.
She was going to the hotel at Tanfield, the same where she had once put up alone. Here her box was ordered to a room which seemed to have been made ready for her; and Mr. Southwode remarked that lunch would be ready presently. Rotha took off her hat and joined him in the private room where it was prepared. A wood fire was burning, and a table was set, and the October sun shone in, and Mr. Digby was there reading a paper. Rotha put her hand upon her eyes; it seemed too much brightness all at once. Mr. Southwode on his part laid down his paper and looked at her; he was noticing with fresh surprise the changes that three years had made. Truly, this was not what he left in Mrs. Busby's care. And there is no doubt Mr. Southwode as well as Rotha had something to think of; and questions he had been debating with himself since yesterday came up with new emphasis and urgency. Nothing of all this shewed. He laid down his paper, stirred up the fire, gave Rotha an easier chair than the one she had first chosen, and took a seat opposite her.
"We have got to begin all over again," he smilingly remarked.
"Oh no!" said Rotha. "I do not think so."
"Why? We cannot be said to know one another now, can we?"
"I know you—" said Rotha a little lower.
"Do you? But I do not know you."
"I am just what I used to be," the girl said briskly, raising her head.
"By your own shewing, not. The bird I left would have beat its wings lame against the bars of the cage I found it in."